1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to lane boundary line recognition apparatus and programs capable of recognizing a lane boundary line of a roadway on which an own vehicle drives. The lane boundary line separates the inside of a vehicle lane (as a part of a roadway), for the own vehicle on which the own vehicle drives, from the outside of the vehicle lane or from another vehicle lane.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been known conventional techniques, for example, Japanese patent laid open publication No. H11-296799, which recognize a lane boundary line on the basis of image obtained by an in-vehicle camera, and further estimates the lane boundary line on the basis of map information. When a recognition accuracy of the lane boundary line recognized by using the image is low, the conventional technique selects and uses the lane boundary line estimated on the basis of the map information instead of using the recognized lane boundary line obtained on the basis of the in-vehicle camera.
However, there is a tendency of reducing the recognition accuracy of recognizing a lane boundary line on the basis of the map information. When the conventional technique uses the lane boundary line estimated on the basis of the map information without using the recognition results of lane boundary line by using the image obtained by the in-vehicle cameras, there is often a possible problem of reducing the recognition accuracy of the lane boundary line.